The Snapchat Cohort Gets Into Politics, and Civics Is Cool

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Bridgette Francis, who teaches government at the College of Staten Island High School for International Studies, said her students had become more engaged with the news during this last presidential campaign.CreditCreditYana Paskova for The New York Times

In the hallways of Middle School 447 in Brooklyn, talk of gay rights and President Trump’s executive order on immigration has replaced chatter about “the Kardashians or Beyoncé, or somebody’s new sneakers,” said Leslie Hughes, a seventh-grade English teacher.

And at Riverside High School in Greer, S.C., “they’re talking about Jeff Sessions and they’re talking about Betsy DeVos,” said Lindsey Beam, a science teacher and adviser to the youths in the government club.

These are signs of unusual times.

With Mr. Trump in the White House, the obsession with politics that has many adult Americans fiercely focused on the Senate’s latest confirmation hearing and the president’s last Twitter message has filtered down to those not yet of voting age. High school and even middle school students are showing a level of civic engagement not seen in years, their teachers and principals say.

That, in part, is because it is so much easier to keep up with current events than it was in the past. Rather than having to sit down and watch the nightly news, teenagers can just scroll through Snapchat and Facebook on their phones. The adults in their lives are more attuned to politics as well, and dinner tables are thick with conversation about Mr. Trump’s latest executive orders. And then there is the ultimate teenage imperative: Their friends are talking about it, and they don’t want to be left out.

“Not only is information easy to find, it finds you,” said Theo Shulman, a high school freshman at the NYC iSchool, standing at a student rally in Lower Manhattan last week opposing Mr. Trump’s policies.

“Even if you aren’t looking for it, you’re going to find it,” added Hayden Mosher-Smith, a classmate, who compared the trending level of political memes to those of pop stars. “Like how you don’t have to read a story about Zayn Malik. You’ll know about Zayn Malik.”

“And Bernie Sanders is the new Zayn Malik,” Theo said.

For students who identify as liberal, many appear to be animated by concerns about the rights of immigrants, Muslims, women and the L.G.B.T. community. At the Manhattan rally, a couple of hundred students from different schools convened at Foley Square, having walked out of class in the middle of the day. Word spread largely on social media, and the students arrived on a wet and cold afternoon, shouldering signs along with their backpacks. One sign said, “Make Racists Afraid Again (or, like, for the first time).”

But the interest is not confined to young people on the left. At Ms. Francis’ Staten Island high school, the students are a mix of liberal and conservative — Staten Island was the only one of New York City’s five boroughs to go for Mr. Trump in the presidential election. Ms. Francis is in her 16th year of teaching, and she has been through plenty of elections, but during this presidential campaign, something started to change, she said.

Her students would ask her arcana about the caucus process and superdelegates. Now, they can offer up specifics about United States border policies during class discussion. When Ms. DeVos was confirmed as education secretary last week, Ms. Francis said, she heard about it from a student.

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Olivia Matz, 15, at a demonstration in Foley Square last week. High school and college students across New York City walked out of classes at noon to oppose the recent executive order targeting Muslims and refugees.CreditHilary Swift for The New York Times

“It’s a conversation in the lunchroom, when normally politics really isn’t the thing to talk about,” said Julie Firetag, a government and economics teacher at Heathwood Hall Episcopal School, a private school in Columbia, S.C. “They don’t want to look stupid in front of their friends. So when they see that story on their news feed, they may click on it.”

Ms. Beam, who teaches science at the same state’s Riverside High School, said she had to limit how much class time she and her students could spend discussing politics during the presidential campaign. “I’ll foster this debate,” she said, “but we’ve got to learn chemistry at some point.”

For teachers of social studies and A.P. government, however, this moment is scholastic manna from heaven.

“They know a lot, and they’re proud that they know a lot,” Ms. Francis said. “What’s on their radar in terms of world events and domestic issues has grown exponentially.”

Krisztina Jankura, who teaches eighth-grade social studies at a Growing Up Green charter school in Queens, said her students had mentioned watching several speeches — which most likely popped up on their news feeds — in which politicians like Senator Bernie Sanders were discussing cabinet posts.

But students can be just as vulnerable to the scourge of “fake news” as their parents.

Ed Raines, principal of Washburn Rural High School in Topeka, Kan., said that in the twilight of the Obama administration, an outraged student brought in an article that said Mr. Obama had awarded himself the Medal of Honor, which he never did. Class time that day was focused on how to evaluate online sources and what red flags students should watch for.

Mr. Raines said that while his school was in a conservative area, he did have some students on the left. And on either side, he said, their questions seem to be seeking something similar: reassurance in an age of bifurcation and rancorous disagreement.

“The whole notion of being able to disagree without being disagreeable is something that I think the kids long for,” Mr. Raines said. “And they’re seeking direction on how we get back to that point.”

Of course, this political moment has been unusual for adults as well. Emily Kaczmarek, who teaches English and offers college counseling to low-income students in New York City through two nonprofit organizations, said that watching her students become more engaged had helped her see this moment differently.

“This is something that has been a note of hope for me,” she said. “It’s seeing students wake up to their citizenship, to the fact that citizenship is not passive, or shouldn’t be. Regardless of how you feel about everything that’s going on, it’s thrilling as an educator to see that shift happen in a teenager, to see their world get wider.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: For Tech-Savvy Students, Apathy to Current Events Is a Thing of the Past. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe